The smell of fresh paint still lingers in Toney Chisum Jr.'s office on the first floor of the American Philanthropy Assn.'s new shelter. Chisum, executive director of the nonprofit organization that runs two other shelters in South-Central, is taking care of last-minute details as the two-story facility, at 8770 S. Broadway, prepares for its official opening on Wednesday.

For anyone who recognizes John Prine as one of the two or three finest songwriters of the rock era, the best thing about his show Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano is that he proved he's still got it. Only trouble is, he left unclear just how much of it remains. There's no arguing about the quality of the material he presented during the first of three nights at the club, where last year about this time he thoroughly mined his extensive repertoire for the double album that resulted, "John Prine Live."

Success, the adage goes, is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. For 11 years now, the TwistOffs have been doing their share of perspiring while chasing success, plugging away through personnel changes, indifference from major record labels and playing in smoke-filled, alcohol-soaked dives. The payoff? Not exactly Fat City.

May 13, 1992 | Octavio Sandoval, 17, is a junior at Manual Arts High School in South-Central Los Angeles. He lives with his four brothers and two sisters.

On Wednesday, my friends and I went cruising around. On Thursday, that's when I went to a furniture store. Two friends were with me. We went to Hi Brite Furniture Store, right near here on the corner. I saw everybody getting things, so I said, "It seemed like fun" so I started doing it. We walked home with three beds--cars even stopped for us as we went across the street. The guys I was with didn't want anything but they helped me carry the beds.

September 25, 1986 | BONNIE McCULLOUGH, McCullough, based in Colorado, is the author of five books on home management.

Parents place a child or two and all their books, games, toys and clothes into a little room and then expect the children to keep it clean. They are asking them to manage more inventory for their age than the floor manager at a store. One of the biggest dilemmas for parents is what to do about the child's bedroom.

November 15, 2008 | Craig Nakano and David A. Keeps, Nakano and Keeps are Times staff writers.

Given all the comparisons between the current economic crisis and the Great Depression, it's fitting that the nation's housing woes have helped to revive another piece of history. Welcome back the bunk bed. The first inklings of its renaissance are emerging from furniture designers and retailers, who report that parents are buying bunk beds as a way to squeeze more children into modestly sized homes. IKEA has seen U.S. demand grow 10% in just the last year, a spokeswoman said.

Lynn Starks-Williams turns away at the sight of bunk beds. Her lasting image of them froze in April 1997, when she walked into her daughter's bedroom and found Whitney, 3, strangled between her bunk bed's frame and guardrail. After learning that the bed's maker had ignored furniture industry guidelines that could have saved her daughter's life, the Oklahoma City mom campaigned relentlessly until her state voted to make voluntary bunk bed standards the law.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday approved mandatory safety regulations for bunk beds, which have been blamed for the deaths of 89 children since 1990. Voluntary furniture industry guidelines were established in 1992, but federal regulators subsequently have recalled more than 630,000 wood and metal beds that failed to meet them.

CARLSBAD, Calif. - The Legoland Hotel, which opened April 5, got plenty of little things wrong in its first weeks. But its designers got one thing enormously right, and that will make this place a screaming success: kid-centricity. "The dragon is made out of Legos!" my daughter, Grace, who is about to turn 9, said as we approached the hotel entrance a week after the opening. Inside the lobby, Grace; my wife, Mary Frances; and I found a faux fountain, a play pit full of little plastic bricks and dozens of deeply absorbed children who were collaborating on a rainbow-hued monolith, constructing pretend weapons, hollering, whispering, running, jumping and dragging their parents from one discovery to the next.

A man left paralyzed below the chest after he fell from the top of a jail bunk bed when a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy used a stun gun on him sued the Sheriff's Department on Tuesday, alleging that his civil rights had been violated. According to the federal lawsuit, Blake Dupree, 22, said he was standing on his bunk about four to seven feet above the concrete jail floor with his hands raised in a defensive posture when he was stunned with a Taser, which delivers a 50,000-volt shock.